7/14/2010 @ 4:45PM

The Farmer's Wife Of Vintage Fashion

Kerry Taylor knows vintage couture. One of the youngest auctioneers ever to work for
Sotheby’s
(she joined the esteemed auction house in 1979, at the age of 19), she developed the company’s costume and textile department, and eventually served as director in charge of all collector’s areas. That meant working with wardrobes including those of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and curating major pieces of costume, like the wedding suit of King James II, circa 1670.

In 2003 Taylor left
Sotheby’s
to start her own eponymous auction house, now a leader in the auction world for vintage fashion and textiles. Kerry Taylor Auctions has managed the wardrobe collections of Daphne Guinness, Jerry Hall and French actress Leslie Caron; it oversaw the sale of a robe designed by Matisse for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and a Catherine Walker gown worn by Princess Diana. (Kerry continues to work for Sotheby’s as a textile consultant.)

But Taylor’s 7-year-old company isn’t just about art-house snobbery. It deals in clothing as recent as the 1980s (a metallic blue Thierry Mugler dress recently went for £9,000) and from progressive designers including Yogi Yamamoto and Comme des Garçons.

Forbes spoke with Taylor about the state of the fashion industry and why buyers have embraced vintage couture so passionately.

Forbes: How’s the vintage market doing these days?

Kerry Taylor: It’s incredible, really. Since the Lehmann Brothers crash and the world went into recession, we’ve just gone from strength to strength. I’m continuously shocked and surprised by how much prices are increasing to the very far end of things. If we’re looking at really wonderful pieces from say the 1920s or ’30s, it’s really not unusual to have them selling for £20,000, £30,000–possibly more. Ten years ago, that would have been unheard of.

My problem is I can’t find enough of it. That’s my big gripe. If I can find it, I can sell it so easily and so well now.

Some designers take hits from time to time, but [there's a market for] anything really good and really early that’s museum quality and also has the potential to be worn. For example in our last collection we had the 1980 Thierry Mugler metallic blue gown, and I think it was in at £2,000 to £3,000, and we made £9,000 in the end, plus buyer’s premium of 20%. So there you have something that’s just super-sexy, super-wearable, plus museum quality and not that old quite honestly. [There's also interest in] a lot of things like Comme des Garçons, which are unwearable, almost, but very interesting.

A lot of museums are really anxious to acquire pieces from us, early pieces from the 1980s by Yogi Yamamoto and Comme des Garçons. And again, one woolen dress would sell for £6,000 or £7,000.

Why are these items selling so well?

I think there are two main reasons that the market has begun spiraling upward. The first one is that all of the museums internationally have woken up to the fact that if you have a major fashion exhibition you get footfall. You get footfall like you will get for no other exhibition. It will be wild. The museums will have people in your shops, people will be buying tickets. It’s the most popular subject in terms of creating interest and getting people through the doors. So they realize that. They also realize that there is a finite supply of these things, as I am very aware. And that actually if you miss this particular lot this year, you may never find another one.

We also have new fashion museums opening. I understand we have one opening up in Moscow and another in Latvia, for goodness sake. We have this amazing museum in Santiago, Chile. And we also have new buyers from China and Korea that we never used to have, so they have a big effect.

The other main thing is that women realize that to buy something vintage, you’re getting something superbly well made. At auction–I cannot speak for the retailers, because I do know that their prices are way higher than mine–but at auction, certainly, it really is excellent value for the money. You can buy something really beautiful for a couple of hundred pounds. Really beautiful. A little beaded dress or an evening cape. It’s not all super-fortunes.

So you’re saying that Vintage means something more than ready-to-wear does?

It shows something about the individual. It shows that they’ve got taste as an individual. Most of the stuff that you see in the shops is the same. It’s very “samey.” Even when they’re trying not to be samey, they’re very, very samey. I know looking around Harvey Nic’s and Selfridges and places like this, where they have the prêt-a-porter by all the major designers, and it does not make my heart sing. It really doesn’t. And I think that what is on offer to the ordinary woman is really bland. It’s really, really bland, all tasteless.

And if you buy vintage it makes you feel special, and it costs a fraction of what one of these nasty modern things at Selfridges does.

Years ago, I remember, I had a disastrous sale in New York. It was the only sale I’ve ever had that has been a disaster. And it was the first-ever sale of couture in Sotheby’s New York. That was in the late 1980s, early 90s. No one came. No one came to the view. No one came to the sale. I couldn’t believe it. My guts were tied into knots, and I thought I was going to be ill. The auctioneer kept looking at me, giving me dagger looks. And these we’re talking about very early 1950s taffeta ball gowns by
Christian Dior
, puff ball gowns in pink by Balenciaga. Not a taker. Not a taker!

I remember this lady coming up to me, this big-haired lady coming up to me, and she said, ‘Why are you doing this?’ And I said, ‘Well these are very important things!’ And she said, ‘Honey I can afford new, why would I spend my money on this?’ That was the mentality! And that has been the mentality until about the last 10 years, to be honest with you.

But now?

Suddenly you’ve got starlets walking the red carpet, doing their little shimmying in Valentine couture, which no one else will ever have–and that’s the other thing. It’s big theater. I mean I’m not a star, but if I were a star and I was turning up to do my shimmy at the Oscars and someone else showed up with the same dress, my god …

It once happened with the Duchess of Windsor at a party she threw. She was wearing a Givenchy striped silk dress from the early 70s, and someone else turned up in the same dress. Unforgivable! Unforgivable! I don’t know how they got out of that one. Mortifying.

But if you’re buying something vintage, it says something a little bit about you: It’s quite classy. It shows that you’re looking outside the pack, you’re hunting outside the pack. You’re able to make your own mind up about your own style, and you don’t have to follow whatever the current trend is.

So what designers or countries are especially hot in vintage at the moment?

The Japanese are really hot right now. Sometimes auctions can be affected by museum exhibitions and publications as well. If suddenly [the Fashion Institute of Technology] did a big exhibition on Madame Grès and put out a book, the price goes up. If Victoria & Albert Museum does a retrospective and a book on [English designer] Ossie Clark, the price goes up. Suddenly people shift their focus. I think that publicity and museum exposure helps. I think seeing celebrities wearing these things helps. But I think ultimately the beauty of these things sells themselves, really. And in fact that it’s running out, and I’m very worried about that.

There’s a finite supply. There will come a point when some of my collectors who are the same age as me or a bit older than me will get so old and haggard that they decide to go do something, but currently speaking, that’s not happening. And I’m aware when I’m on the rostrum that these things are–even when they’re making good money–still bargains. As an applied art, they’re still very low down the pecking order. I mean, we recently sold a Chanel, a little lace Chanel, for £20,000 or £23,000. That had been sold by a vintage dealer in the fair in London, thrown to this lady, ‘Do you want this? £150.’ She paid £150, took it home, found the Chanel label, brought it into me, and I paid for her house to be renovated. It’s great! And that’s gone into a private collection. It will never ever come on the market again.

It must be tempting to be surrounded by all of these beautiful things every day at work. Do you personally wear vintage?

I’m not very good on contemporary fashion. I dress like a farmer’s wife, personally, I seriously do–I’m never happier than if I’m in a pair of Wellingtons and a check shirt. It’s true! I am not the Anna Wintour of vintage fashion. I’m more like, you know, I’d say the farmer’s wife of vintage fashion.

I’m sure if I could just afford the couture and go to Paris and be coiffed and buy everything and have a really lovely time with John Galliano, I’d feel a lot better. [Laughs.] But I do wear vintage. I’ve got a lovely little ’40s dress I wear when I auction, and there’s not a time when I wear it when I’m not stopped by someone who says, “Love your dress! Where did you get that from?” I’ve got this fantastic Madame Grès sort of graduated coat, very long at the back and sort of knee length at the front, and it’s one of the last things she made before she died, and again, I just get people stopping me on the street saying, “Where did you get that coat? Love your coat.”

What do you expect the vintage market to do in the next few years? It’s strong now–will that continue?

It’s fabulous. I cannot see it leveling off at the moment. Even when it’s expensive, as far as I’m concerned it’s still relatively cheap. And there is such huge interest in this field now.